AND ORNAMENTAL TREATMENT. 49 



blossoms are loosely and spirally arranged in long, terminal spikes. The petals, five in number, 

 alternating very pleasingly in form (fig. 250), with the sepaloid masses of the calyx. The 

 spikes, unlike those of many other plants, are not clothed at all with leaves, but each flower springs 

 from the axil of a small bract, three or five-cleft, and flanked by two smaller bracteoles ; these 

 bracts may be seen indistinctly in fig. 249, and much more clearly in the enlarged views, figs. 254, 

 255. 256. The lower leaves of the plant (fig. 258) are large, and have on each side from seven 

 to nine large lateral leaflets, intermixed with numerous smaller ones, these and the large terminal 

 leaflet being very coarsely serrated, while the upper leaves, though similar in general character, have 

 a smaller number of leaflets (fig. 251), and the leaf as a whole is not so large. The calyx during 

 flowering points upwards, but on the death of the blossom turns downwards, as shewn in our 

 illustration, rapidly enlarges, and becomes covered at its summit (fig. 253) with a number of 

 hooked bristles. 



Chaucer speaks of the plant as the " Agremoine," but many old writers term it Philan- 

 thropos, on account, as some say, of its beneficent medicinal properties, or, according to others, 

 from its calyces clinging to the clothes of the wayfarer, as if desirous of being his companions in 

 travel. The generic name, Agrimonia, is a corruption of Argemone, a name given by Greek 

 writers to a plant supposed to cure cataract. 



The Agrimony is one of the most favourite remedies of the old herb doctors, being used 

 not only in cases where its tonic and febrifugal qualities would really be of service, but also, on 

 the principle of a good thing never being out of place, in many remedies where its benefits could 

 only spring from a strong faith in its power : thus, for the relief of haemorrhage a sovereign cure 

 was compounded of human blood, pounded frogs, and agrimony — a remedy that, were such 

 diseases at all under the influence of the will, would certainly, from its nastiness, effectually cure 

 any one, and prevent a repetition of the attack. Another writer, in spreading its fame, explains to 

 what causes its potency must be attributed ; for he tells us that " it is an herb under Jupiter and 

 the sign Cancer, and strengthens those parts under the planet and sign, and removes diseases in 

 them by sympathy ; and those under Saturn, Mercury, and Mars by antipathy, if they happen in 

 any part of the body governed by Jupiter, or under the signs Cancer, Sagittary, or Pisces." In 

 some astrological way, of which the secret would appear to be now lost, he finds it a vermifuge, a 

 remedy for gout, liver complaints, inward wounds, the biting of serpents, colic, cough, ague, 

 cancer, deafness, and many other of the ills of mortality, extracting thorns, strengthening the 

 joints, cleansing, opening, and binding ; in fact, it would appear, so varied are its healing powers, 

 to be as potent as some, at least, of the patent medicines of the present day, and a possession as 

 valuable to the 15th century as those are to the 19th. 



As we have had occasion to refer at some little length to the bracts of the Agrimony, we 

 will take the opportunity of explaining the nature of bracteal forms, since, under various modifi- 

 cations, they are frequently met with, and are frequently features of sufficient importance to become 

 an element in the treatment of a plant in design. Some little knowledge of their nature will, 

 therefore, be an advantage to the student. 



The term bract is applied to the leaves of the floral stem when they differ from the other 

 leaves in size, shape, colour, or arrangement : they are ordinarily much smaller than the leaves (as 

 in present example) and sessile. Bracts, though generally green, are not invariably so ; thus, in 

 the Astrantia major, they are white, or tinged with pink ; when coloured they ordinarily partake 

 of the colour of the blossom. The one or two last forms beneath the flower, when differing in 

 some marked degree in size, or form, or colour from the other bracts, are sometimes termed 

 bracteoles. Bracteal forms often insensibly merge into the ordinary foliate forms of the plant ; 

 the intermediate forms that, from their position, may be either lower bracts or upper leaves, and 

 can scarcely be satisfactorily assigned to either class, are often termed leafy bracts or floral leaves. 

 Bracts are true leaves modified by their position : this may be easily known, not only by a study 

 of the scarcely perceptible gradation between the two noted above, but also from the fact, that in 

 many plants the bracts develop into true leaf forms. In some foreign species the floral leaf, in 

 its transformation into a bract, instead of retaining its foliaceous character, becomes a spine, a 

 tubercle, or a tendril. 



When the floral stems, as in the umbel of the Carrot (Dancus Carota), and the capitulum 

 or flower head of the Daisy (Bellis perennis), rise from nearly the same point, the ring of bracts 

 thus formed is called an involucre or involucrum ; where, as in many of the umbellate plants, the 

 umbel is compound — that is to say, where each ray, instead of bearing one flower, has at its summit 

 a smaller umbel of flowers — the bracts of the lesser umbel form an involucel. In capitulate 

 growth, as in the Daisy, Dandelion, and other composite flowers, the bracts of the involucrum 

 form an envelope of several imbricating rows, so that many beginners, thinking of the Dandelion 

 as one flower, instead of an aggregation of flowers into one head, mistake the involucral bracts 



